Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — The woman who carried out the San Bernardino massacre with her husband had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and its leader on Facebook, a U.S. law enforcement official said Friday, providing the strongest evidence to date that the rampage may have been a terrorist attack.
The official said Tashfeen Malik made her posts under an alias and deleted them before she and husband Syed Farook killed 14 people Wednesday at a holiday party for his co-workers. The Muslim couple were killed hours later in a fierce gunbattle with police.
Malik, 27, was a Pakistani who came to the U.S. in 2014 on a fiancee visa. Farook, a 28-year-old restaurant health inspector for the county, was born in Chicago to Pakistani parents and raised in Southern California.
Another U.S. official said Malik expressed "admiration" for the extremist group's leader on Facebook under the alias account. But the official said there was no sign that anyone affiliated with the Islamic State communicated back with her, and there was no evidence of any operational instructions being conveyed to her.
The two officials were not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Law enforcement officials are attempting to discover what led a couple to shoot and kill 14 people at a social services centre in San Bernardino. Tashfeen Malik, 29, and her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, left their six-month-old daughter with Farook's mother before perpetrating what is thought to be the worst mass shooting since 26 were killed in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. Malik was killed alongside her husband four hours later in a shootout with police. On Friday, the FBI said it is beginning to investigate the shooting as an "act of terrorism" as it was revealed Malik had pledged allegiance to Isis in a now-deleted Facebook post.
Tashfeen Malik, left, and Syed Farook died in a shoot-out with police
The FBI has acknowledged knowing little about Malik. It is unclear when she became radicalised, or who radicalised her. FBI officers have indicated she and Farook probably "self-radicalised" online. Authorities discovered a huge arsenal of guns, ammunition and pipe-bombs in the couple's home, suggesting they had been planning additional attacks. It has been reported Malik moved to Saudi Arabia with her father at a young age, and lived there until 2007. She is then believed to have returned to Pakistan to attend a pharmacology school at Bahauddin Zakariya university.
Weapons used by the suspects
An intelligence official said she was a "good student with no religious extremist tendencies". She did not work as a pharmacist in the US. Malik and Farook met in 2013 on the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, The Guardian reports. They married shortly after, and she entered the US on a K-1 visa, which is provided for spouses of American citizens. Security officials say she visited Pakistan again in 2013 and 2014, but it is unclear who she met or where she visited. Local mosque leaders said she was not well known in the local Muslim community.
Everything we know about San Bernardino killer Tashfeen Malik
Investigators believe the weapons cache collected by Tashfeen Malik, 29, and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, points to more attacks but they do not have evidence on other possible targets, a senior U.S. government source told Reuters. The couple stormed a gathering of his work colleagues in San Bernardino, California, on Wednesday, opening fire with assault-style rifles and killing 14 people. The pair were killed a few hours later in a shootout with police. U.S. authorities were trying to learn what contacts Malik might have had with Islamic militants in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where she grew up, the official said on condition of anonymity. They lack clear evidence that the wife was radicalized overseas or that she in turn radicalized her husband, though they are actively investigating that, the official said.
Tashfeen Malik is pictured in this undated handout photo provided by the FBI
Authorities are investigating the shootings as an act of terrorism. President Barack Obama scheduled an Oval Office address Sunday to outline how the country is responding to the broader threat of terrorism. Malik's estranged relatives in Pakistan have said she appeared to have abandoned the family's moderate Islam and become more radicalized in Saudi Arabia, where she moved as a toddler. She returned to Pakistan and studied pharmacy at Bahauddin Zakaria University in Multan from 2007 to 2012. "There's a serious investigation ongoing into what she was doing in Pakistan and in Saudi," U.S. Representative Michael McCaul said on "Fox News Sunday." "We think that she had a lot to do with the radicalization process and perhaps with Mr. Farook's radicalization from within the United States." "The wild card here is the wife Malik," said McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He said investigators were also looking at where they got the money to acquire the guns.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said U.S. authorities have no evidence that the shooters were part of a larger terrorism cell but were working with their counterparts overseas to gather information about their lives. "We are trying to learn everything we can about both of these individuals," Lynch said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It will be a long process, it will be an exhaustive process." "And we are trying to learn as much as we can about her life before they met, after they met and frankly, after she came here as well. What we are trying to focus on again is what motivated these two individuals."
ISLAMIC STATE LINK UNCLEAR
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan briefed reporters on what Pakistani authorities know about the suspect, 29-year-old Tashfeen Malik. "So far, the investigation has found that they were settled in Saudi Arabia, her (Tashfeen Malik's) parents moved to Saudi Arabia 25 years ago, her brothers and sisters have grown up over there," Khan said. "She studied here (in Pakistan) in a university but there is no evidence found in the investigation so far that could link her (Malik) with Islamic militants."
Khan said Pakistani has offered its help to the United States. "We offered complete legal assistance which is our international responsibility, whenever the other side [US] concerned asks us, we will provide complete legal assistance and it is very limited," Khan said.
U.S. authorities have been trying to determine why Malik and her U.S.-born husband U.S.-Syed Rizwan Farook killed 14 people and wounded another 21 at a holiday gathering of local government workers in San Bernardino, California. Malik came to the United States in 2014 on a fiancee visa. Her and Farook had a six-month old child, whom they dropped off at a relative's house before launching the attack.
Pakistan: No Link Between Militants and California Shooting Suspect
